Coatings for Architectural Glass

Modern buildings and houses are often clad in double panes (double glazing) or triple panes (triple glazing) to enhance views and daylight. The optical qualities of the glass and its multilayer coatings are important from both practical and aesthetic pints of views.

Panes are manufactured with glass in range of thickness from 3 mm to 10 mm. Laminated or tempered glass may also be used as part of the construction.

OptiLayer allows designing all types of panes-coatings combinations and achieving any specified target specifications with the help of the powerful stack tool.

Simplified example: two glass panes with antireflection coatings on both of them.

Target specifications:

maximize light transmittance (visible light);

maximize solar transmittance;

provide colors of the reflected light in the range: -3<a*<2, -3<b*<2;

maximal Color Rendering Index (CRI);

working angular range is from 0 to 60 degrees;

OptiLayer allows simultaneous specifications of targets of different types: conventional, color, integral and electrical-field. In this particular design problem three types of targets are involved:

Conventional target (T=100% in the range from 300 nm to 2500 nm);

Integral Target: Light Transmittance=100%, Solar Transmittance=100%;

Spectral luminous efficiency \(V(\lambda)\) and spectral distribution of solar radiation \(S(\lambda)\), which are necessary for calculations, are built in OptiLayer (F1, F2). Of course, you can define and use your own spectral distributions (F3, F4, etc).

Possible thin film materials: TiO2, SiO2, Silver.

Result: a double glazing with 8-layer metal-dielectric coatings on the internal surfaces.